Area 52 Octofox | Phillips Brewing Company

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Notes / Commercial Description:
Octofox IPA was one of the earliest beers in the brewery’s “Area 52″ series of rotating one-off IPAs, and is described as follows:

It pours a deep golden colour with a soft marshmallow white head. Full bodied and bright, flavours of citrus are balanced against a pine-bitter hop profile that finishes dry. Octofox is selectively brewed to be broadly enjoyed.

New label and Octofox is released again for 2015,
L: clear bright, golden hue, s: citrus hops when warms a bit. Not at ton of aroma. T: a bit unbalanced and confused. Apple and Passionfruit initially, then pine a fair bit of bitterness at the end. F: spot on, nice round full mouthfeel
O: It is not terrible. it is just a bit off all the way around.
The pine finishes too quick and not dank enough for my taste, and so does the nose and citrus, too little too quick to end. The malt is present but not enough to balance the bittering hops.

Sorry to write this review in what appears to be an earlier batch but I don't actually know if the recipe changed, so I'm erring on the side of caution. This bottle was picked up from a BCLS and looked fairly new, with different artwork than what is shown in the picture above.

Anyway, to get to the point: this beer is awful. Outright, straight-up awful. Looks nice, etc. but it tastes like you're chewing on a steel bar. Never have I tried a beer that tasted just straight-up metallic. There's a somewhat ok hop kick to it (a bit grassy imo) when it first enters your mouth, and then you swallow and all you can taste is metal. There are no undertones, overtones or any kind of tones - it's just metal all the way down. I actually found it impossible to drink this. I poured 3/4ths of the bomber down the drain and I almost never do that.

If you enjoy the taste of metal, though, this is definitely a must-buy. I don't think you'll ever find another beer that reproduces the taste quite as faithfully as this.

A clear golden liquid, looks fairly still but pumps out a very well sustained three fingers of foam, strange having a massive head but hardly any visible bubbles, a fair amount of random lace deep down the glass